


The First Time

by MissMartine



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Anachronistic, F/M, POV Dana Scully, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2018-02-03
Packaged: 2018-09-12 05:14:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 3,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9057103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissMartine/pseuds/MissMartine
Summary: We know there was a first time that they slept together. A first time they kissed, spoke about their feelings, acted on them, and so on. But what if their first time was much sooner than we were ever shown? These little vignettes are all stories of Scully and Mulder behind the scenes of various episodes - all their possible "first times."





	1. Chapter 1

The first time was when you came back from near death. Came back just in time to reassert yourself at my side, defending me against the man I thought might be plotting my death too. You intervened and we were back on one team, back in action. We stepped into the elevator and as the doors closed, you turned to me, and I could no longer hold back my relief that you were still alive. The skin of your neck was hot to the touch as I wrapped my arms around you. Your kiss was fierce. The little threads that had been slowly stitching us together caught hold.


	2. Chapter 2

The first time was after you said it, sitting in the front seat of your car, in the dark, the sandwich I’d made for you in your hand. The L word. I hadn’t even realized that I loved you, but of course I did, with the freshness of a new romance and a new purpose in life. Funny how the scariest, most dangerous and disturbing parts of our job were so often a catalyst for love. Without them, there might have been no need for our love at all.


	3. Chapter 3

The first time was right before I found out what was wrong with me. I had pulled so hard away from you, wanting to wrest control back from what I felt was my life taken over by your quest - but the violence of pulling away just ricocheted me back to you, equally as hard and forceful. After Ed, you were exactly what I needed. I think you knew it. But it made getting the news that much worse. It made you that much sweeter, softer, gentler with me when we found out.


	4. Chapter 4

The first time was when you came back from near death, again. There was no way to hide my joy in seeing you; not in a courtroom full of people, staring at both of us. It was all I could do not to throw myself on you right then and there. The look in your eyes told me the same, the way you tipped your face so close to mine and spoke in a voice meant only for my ears. Later, when I could see the wounds on your body in private, we wept. Then sighed. Then felt joy together, again.


	5. Chapter 5

The first time was when we stayed in Arcadia. By then I had been wanting you for years. By then, we had traveled so far together, so much road behind us going steadily in the same direction, that any divergence seemed too abrupt. But when you opened that door for me, I walked through it. Our bodies behaved as if they already knew each other.


	6. Chapter 6

The first time was after you saved my life, shifting my weakened body out of the strange alien pod in which I’d been encapsulated and into your coat, forcing me to escape into the freezing arctic terrain. No, it didn’t happen there, but the events of that week had set us into motion. Back in DC, as I healed from yet another bout with the virus we both knew too well, I craved your strength in a way I never had before. You caressed my face, fingers tracing the split blood vessels across my nose and cheeks. I wanted you to smooth them away with just a touch. We found other ways to smooth out the pain, instead.


	7. Chapter 7

The first time was after we fought over every little thing we encountered in Comity. Every time, I almost hated you for a few moments, moments that built on each other until I couldn’t stand it anymore and didn’t know if I wanted to strike you across the face, or throw you onto a bed and press myself on top of you, the way she had done. In the car on the way back, I figured it out. We barely made it three miles before I pulled off the road and grabbed your shoulders, moving over to straddle you in the passenger seat. Not surprisingly, you were fair game. We ended up in the backseat and you fucked me until we both cried out, coming with all the force of an astrological event.


	8. Chapter 8

The first time was, well, a folie a deux. Wasn’t it? Once more sharing a tiny elevator, carrying us to the basement where we were, once more, alone. I had saved your life. Again. Maybe it was the tipping point of you being indebted to me for that, and I to you, combined with the leftover adrenaline of almost being turned into a zombie by some kind of insect-man, topped off by the way your cologne drifted past me as you opened the door to our office - 

Whatever it was, once inside, I locked the door behind us and your arms were around me in a heartbeat, your hands tangling in my hair, your chest reverberating with moans as I stretched up to reach your mouth with mine. I couldn’t get enough of you. You took all of me. Nothing and no one else mattered, for the time being. Just us, in five billion.


	9. Chapter 9

The first time was after I found out about the other woman. I had no idea how strong my reaction would be - that I would think of her as “the other woman.” But it hit me like a slap across the face, and in the stinging, residual pain I realized everything else. How completely I had come to rely on the dynamics of our relationship. That I loved you beyond anything else I’d known in life. That the fine needle of jealousy sewing its way through my heart was both unwelcome, and impossible to ignore.

And then she was shot, and in danger of dying. And then five years of our blood, sweat and tears went up in flames. I thought you’d be too consumed with pain to hear me. But in the silence that followed my whispered love to you, I felt a reprieve, as I always do after confessing. If there was need for contrition, you didn’t ask for it. You tipped my face to yours, kissed me slowly, whispered my words back to me, like a prayer.


	10. Chapter 10

The first time, obviously, was the first time we worked together. On our first case, in that candlelit motel room, after you relieved my fears. We were both so shy. What were we even thinking? The night was vast beyond our door; who knew what threats lurked outside, and awaited us over the next decade. But in that room, in that moment, your passion lit something up inside me. You looked at me like you had been waiting for me. It seemed worth all the risks. I think it was.


	11. Chapter 11

The first time was in the early hours of Christmas morning, with the snow falling softly outside your windows. At home, I’d been unable to sleep, reliving the trauma - whether real or imagined - of you shooting me, every time I closed my eyes. But here, sitting cosily with you on your couch, I began to relax. I began to lean a bit towards you, as we opened our gifts to each other in a flurry of Christmas spirit. I began to feel drowsy as we chatted afterwards, my head dipping towards your shoulder until you caught me up in a cautious embrace. “Take the bed, Scully,” you murmured, “I’ll sleep on the couch.” You showed me to the bedroom but I pulled you in after me. I kissed your warm mouth and you held me close, your hand on my stomach, protective. I felt happy. I slept in your arms. We woke a few hours later, and it was still snowing.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: sexual violence/non-con references.

The first time was after I… God, it was so hard for me to say it. It was the closest I’d ever come to being sexually violated, and the closest I’d come to some of my deepest, most unwavering fears. I could look a violent criminal straight in the eyes and not flinch. I could handle the unexpected, unthinkable, disturbing, and frightening experiences we went through in our work. I could admit that I missed my father terribly, and that my kidnapping and its uncertain period of recovery had thrown me off my stride. But these things somehow stayed in the purview of what I knew about the world. I could see where I stood in relation to them.

This was something else altogether.

I could not see, when I was trapped in that closet, how I might get away. I could not see how anyone could be doing what he was doing to me. And I knew what else he was planning to do. It was that knowledge, playing out images in my mind against my will, that undid me. It was that knowledge that made me weak in those moments while you untied me, when it was all over. But unlike with him, though I was unwilling at first to show you how affected I was - I _wanted_ to. I wanted your comfort, your touch. I wanted _you_.

You cradled me next to you in the car on the way back to the hotel, where Agent Bocks dropped us off with a conciliatory farewell. You murmured about whether I needed anything, if I wanted to leave for home right away, if you should call my mother for me. You fell silent when I would not let go of your hand, and led me gently to my room. The shock that finally hit me blurred the rest of the night - I know there was hot water in the shower, pillows stacked up behind me in bed, the scent of your t-shirt. I know that you never left my side. I know that when I woke up the next morning, wrists aching from the cloth that had bound them, you were there to softly kiss my skin. To look into my eyes again. And this time, it was a little bit easier to meet your gaze.


	13. Chapter 13

The first time was after you told me you loved me. Or was it technically _when_ you told me you loved me? Either way. It was the first time.

“I love you.” Every time I turned around, there was an echo of your words. The way your voice sounded when you said it.

“I love you.” The phrase beat into my mind, in time with my steps as I walked. If I closed my eyes I saw your steady, earnest gaze that night at the hospital.

“I love you.” Alright, I admit it, the words you spoke had pierced me so deeply in that moment that my only option was to immediately shut them out, pushing away in instinctive self-defense, to keep myself from taking them to heart or contemplating their meaning too fully. Or, God forbid, from returning them.

Not that I hadn’t been contemplating their meaning every single day since then.

I still felt justified in dismissing you, considering the ridiculous choices you’d made that day, the fact that you were in an altered state of mind from your ordeal and were sticking to your claims that some alternate timeline existed, where you had seen and done things in the year 1939 and made it back to this decade with the assistance of an alternate Dana Scully. I still didn’t think you had any business running around kissing women just because they looked like me. Even if she - or I - had saved the world.

But then… maybe you did have some business telling me you loved me. Maybe I couldn’t completely refute that claim. In the weeks following, you never repeated it, but I saw it spilling out in little looks you didn’t think I noticed you giving me. Sometimes while we were talking, about nothing more important than paperwork we were filling out or what we might get for lunch that day - a small shift in your gaze would occur and suddenly I’d be feeling the same rush I’d gotten when standing next to your hospital bed. I had to work so, so hard to keep from returning that look. 

At some point I had to reconcile the fact that I was only working against myself.

Why was it so important to keep you from knowing? Was it pride, or some sense of control this gave me over a relationship that externally had been professional for so long, but internally was a wellspring of emotion for me? I agonized over these details too, vulnerability and expressiveness never being my strong suit, until one day I could not agonize anymore. I was scared to take this step, but it made things easier that you had taken it first. As in much of our work together, it was a path down which I would end up following you.

“I love you too.” 

I couldn’t look at you while I said it, but I knew you heard me. We were sitting on opposite sides of the desk - one last symbol of protection from my own feelings, a barrier in case I couldn’t handle the fallout of my confession. The silence that followed was so complete I thought, even though I knew better, that you might literally be able to hear my heart pounding. At last I had to lift my eyes because you weren’t responding. Your hands were motionless on the papers in front of you. You were looking straight at me and your expression was something like astonishment, tenderness, and the emotion I knew was love. I almost laughed out of nervousness and the wild happiness of finally telling you how I felt, of finally being on the same page with you.

“Scully…” you said. And then I was dizzy, clutching the arms of my chair. Now what? Were we finished? Was there something else to be said or done? I hadn’t thought this far, driven as I had been to get those words out. I felt weakened, my adrenaline surging and fading, wondering what would happen next. There was still a very solid desk between us and we were both seated. For all my thinking ahead, maybe I should have told you while we were standing up, or perhaps in the car while we were driving somewhere? The second-guessing at which I was so adept came flooding back and I was paralyzed. I looked at you, waiting, not knowing for what.

You pushed back a little from the desk and the ease of your motion calmed me. You weren’t worrying what would happen next. Your gaze remained on my face and your look became inviting, open and clear. Mesmerized, I got up from my chair and went to stand before you. My breath was shuddering through me but you took my hands and I calmed further. For several moments we simply focused on our clasped hands, and then you stood and pulled me those last few inches to you. Your heart was pounding just as hard in your chest as I lay my cheek against it. This was what was going to happen. You were going to hold me, and press your lips to the top of my head, and I was going to tip my face back and kiss you, the way you had imagined me kissing you in your fever dream, or whatever near-death hallucination you'd had. But better. Real. 

“You see, Scully?” you whispered. “World saved.” And it was.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: illness, potential death

The first time was after I finally admitted my feelings - my fear that I was dying from the cancer. I called you when I got home from the psychiatric center where Harold Spuller had lived, where I'd seen him dead but speaking to me from the back seat of my car, and you were at my door within minutes. I cried so hard. I need you, I said, I need you to be strong for me. I’m afraid, Mulder. I can’t be strong right now. I cannot.

I felt your tears drip as hotly as mine as you held me in my bed, but you said: Yes. I am strong for you. No matter what happens, Scully, whether you live or you die - you will be safe. You are safe. I am here.

When I couldn’t cry any more you kissed my face, carefully, like I might break. I kissed you back, fiercely, like I might never have another chance.


	15. Chapter 15

The first time was after you taught me how to hit a baseball. It wasn’t exactly your body touching mine that started it all. It was the energy that came through your body, through mine, out of our hands as we hit the ball together across the field. It was the vibration of your voice against my back. The magic of all those cares falling away, until we felt just that one thing - that perfect connection of bat and ball, that perfect connection of you and me. 

You bought me a real ice cream cone on the way home, and you didn’t even steal it from my hand. But I let you kiss it from my lips.


	16. Chapter 16

The first time was after you first kissed me. I mean, genuinely kissed me. It was such a strange little moment, tucked into a strange few days, and it seemed at the time like it was meant to be. Was not the universe drawing us ever closer together, as we stoically refused to do the work ourselves; were time and circumstance not nudging us that extra little step towards each other?

The glittering, silver ball dropping in all its splendor, the expressions of happiness and nostalgia, the fact that the world hadn’t ended. Our first kiss was tender and sweet. Our second, on the couch in my apartment later that night, was lingering, tentative but knowing at the same time. All seven years of us, channeled into one embrace. Your arm around me was the most natural thing in the world. My hands on you felt like I was touching my future.

I wanted it never to end. Everything was just beginning.


End file.
